


Unbreakable

by fernandesjulia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Affairs, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Betrayal, Cheating, F/M, Good Narcissa Black Malfoy, Infidelity, Judgment, Letter, Letters, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Sad, Secrets, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Snape is dead, Tragic Romance, im sorry, thoughts, trial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27678005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fernandesjulia/pseuds/fernandesjulia
Summary: On the way to her trial, Narcissa Malfoy writes what maybe is her last letter. Through parchment and ink, she pours her biggest regrets, secrets and her secret love for Severus Snape.
Relationships: Lucius Malfoy & Narcissa Black Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy & Severus Snape, Narcissa Black Malfoy/Severus Snape
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	Unbreakable

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Perpétuo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27566635) by [fernandesjulia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fernandesjulia/pseuds/fernandesjulia). 



> Disclaimer: I do not own nothing from Harry Potter's universe. All belongs to Mrs. Rowling; I only took those characters and stuff to have some fun (okay, it's not fun sometimes...).
> 
> This is a translation of my one-shot called "Perpétuo". English isn't my first language. I tried my best, I'm sorry for any error. Hope you all enjoy!

“Wiltshire

January 19, 1999.

Curious reader,

I don’t know for who I write besides myself. I don’t think that someone would be interested to read these lines, I can’t think of nobody that would worry with a letter from an uninteresting woman like me. I can’t think of nobody, except a truly curious person, who even though doesn’t understand what I’m ‘bout to say here, would never be capable of let go these parchments without before finish them.

I will walk in thirty minutes to my trial. I was able to wait for it in my home, with the bracelet monitor on my left wrist. But don’t think that this made everything easier. I’m alone here, completely lonely inside this imperial fortress which is the Malfoy Manor. My husband was sentenced to Azkaban three months ago and my son – who was condemned to pay a big indemnification, besides to do community work – says that he is haunted by the house where he was born and raised and left me to move to Yorkshire.

I cannot blame Draco. Actually, I would never do it. I understand what he means because I also feel oppressed by the cage which this house has become. These fortified walls and colossal garden seize me much longer than I carry this bracelet on my arm, the furniture, portraits and photos chase me since before the fall of the Dark Lord.

As I was saying, I will go to the Ministry of Magic in a few minutes. Or better, I will be forward by the Aurors team till Wizengamot to be judge by my crimes of omission and association with dark arts. I don’t know if I’ll comeback home – if I can still call it like that. Actually, I don’t even know if I’ll get out of there, unless to go to Azkaban.

I won’t play saint, this neither is my way. My parents, a Black and a Rosier – old members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight -, done an efficient service in passing their purist ideals to their daughters. Or not that efficient, actually. 

I have a theory that there’s a recessive gene that surrounds the Black family, a rare gene that only presents itself in those who are the outlier in that family. Sirius would have been born with this gene, wide showed in his personality since very young. Andromeda too.

Andromeda was thirteen when she confronted our parents for the first time. I remember of her firm voice and tough posture, very strange for a teenager. I also remember of the strong slap our mother hit her delicate face with. There wasn’t a single tear, not even a moan, just a grimace of pain. Andy always was the stronger of the three of us. Stronger, even, than Bellatrix, who always was a scared and arrogant girl who tried to hide her insecurities behind a crazy image.

The slap was enough to keep Andy quiet. She stayed shut for years. A silence so big that rounded the dinner table during the meals, inclusive those with a lot of wine and conversations. The quietness broke through, ironically, with a silence scream of rebellion: a small goodbye note over the cold mattress of her bed in a 1969 night.

However, the slap wasn’t enough to shut up Andy’s ideas. At the time of that confrontation, I was nine, and those sayings, so different from what was taught to me, echoed in my juvenal mind for very long. ‘Fight hate with hate and you all will see the world on flames’, my sister had said. ‘Shouldn’t we have learned something with the Germans?’

That reverberated in my mind for a long time, but doubt and fear stopped me from question what had been taught to me. As I grew – and with the silence of the one who was the outlier of my family -, the questions were pushed away to a hidden corner of my mind. After all, if Andromeda was right, mama wouldn’t have punished her. If she was right, she wouldn’t have shut up. 

So, I married the most coveted young man of the United Kingdom, and I don’t lie when I say that I really loved him. We had the dream wedding, a beautiful ceremony. I was happy, I used to be happy. I used to look at the wedding ring on my finger and sighed, fulfilled. And even in the hard years that had followed, where were too many the tries of getting pregnant against three miscarriages, Lucius was faithfully by my side, supporting me and loving me. In 1980, finally came the big news, and in June of the following year, Draco had born: beautiful, strong and healthy. We were the perfect family and we really felt that way. I don’t know when it all started to crumble.

I remember that things with Lucius gradually cooled down. Motherhood consumed me a lot of time and energy. My husband questioned if it would be better to hire a nanny, or even a wet nurse, and I took this as a huge affront. Did he think that I wasn’t capable of raising my own son? Did he judge me full of myself and too arrogant to deny me to breastfeed my child? It was our first fight, a very ugly one. Lucius slept in one of the guest rooms that night.

So, gradually things got out of hand. We didn’t use to spend some time together anymore, we didn’t kiss with passion, rarely we made love. I spent my whole time with Draco and Lucius was always working, until he come home with a sweet perfume stuck on his body. I cried a lot and for many nights, until I have courage to confront him. Although it all, I’ve to admire the honesty he always had with me, and just like that he confessed his infidelity. Weirdly, in spite of the unsleeping nights which I spent crying my heart out, the confession didn’t hurt me as much as it should. Little by little I just didn’t care anymore.

Yet, we tried. He didn’t cheat me anymore, and I know it’s true. But it wasn’t enough; the damage already had been done. Divorce wasn’t cogitated by any of us. We were two adults raised in very sterns and conservatives families, a divorce would be an unprecedent scandal; besides that, my parents in law never liked me either. A separation would only make everything worse and I would run the risk of having my son took away from me. And, of all of those things, this one I could never let it happens.

Draco always was my everything. I had been very enchanted by Lucius at the beginning of marriage and I used to think that it didn’t exist bigger love than the one I felt for that blonde hair man, but I was incredibly wrong. My son is the person who would make me move Heaven and Hell for him. I would kill and die for that boy – who wasn’t no longer a boy. Those grey eyes, so similar to mine, brought me a warmth and cosiness that I would never be capable of putting it into words. It’s something totally unnameable. I miss him. He still come to visit me sometimes, but it’s not the same thing. He’s always distant, and I recognize that I sinned a lot on the way I raised my son. 

It was at that time, after Lucius’s cheating, that I met Snape. I can’t remember him from my years at Hogwarts. Probably I was worried with my O.W.L.s, and thereafter with my N.E.W.T.s, to pay attention at the young freshman kid of Slytherin. It was Lucius, who was the House’s prefect, that saw potential in that young half-blood who was a prodigy at Potions and Dark Arts. It was also Lucius who dragged him until the Dark Lord’s skirt. 

Snape became a spy inside Hogwarts for the Lord, and of course my husband saw advantage in this. So, he started to approach the young Potions professor, and just like that Snape became a constantly image at the mansion’s parties and between the amount of letters Lucius received every day.

It was a cloudy August afternoon when it all started. Snape came till the mansion; however, Lucius wasn’t here. Politely, I invited him to come in and wait for my husband. By the little I knew of his behaviour, I didn’t expect that he would accept the invitation, but he did it. The house-elves cooked cakes and made tea, Draco was playing over the carpet in front of the fireplace.

I don’t know how to explain. Conversation with Severus always flowed without any effort, and I think that man was capable of talking about anything. And that weird friendship that emerged that afternoon brought back the questions Andromeda had left.

I am a Black and soon after became a Malfoy. I had been surrounded by purists my whole life, and I believe that Severus was the first half-blood who I really looked in the eye and talked as equal. My first impetus was curiosity to understand why my husband was so interested in that poor and no pureblood professor. We exchanged three phrases and I understood Lucius’s fascination: Snape was unbelievable captivating. But not because he was funny or gentle. Far from that. Severus was interesting because of his mysterious aura and that stubborn eyebrow which arched every ten seconds.

Ironically, Snape was the person I trusted to raise the ideas left by my sister, because I needed to understand the vision of a half-blood wizard who had the Dark Mark spiked on his forearm. He told me that the first and most constant image he had of a muggle was his father, an aggressive and disgusting man. His mother, a Prince also raised by purists – the Prince made part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight -, seemed to be constantly sorry for the marriage, and spitted upon her husband her rooted prejudices. 

Snape was the first person who really noticed my knowledge thirst and was him who brought the first books about History and Sociology. He incited me to study and question more and more, and we used to exchange letters and letters about those subjects. There’s a saying that says the way to a person’s heart is thought their stomach. I like to say that Snape got me by my brain, even before my heart.

What started to get me confused in my studies was that everything pointed to a whole opposite side from what was taught to me, completely the contrary from the Dark Lord’s principals. Did I also have born with that gene and it only had taken a long to manifest itself? Why did Snape, a spy Death Eater, make me question what had been told me that didn’t suppose to be questioned?

It took two years of studies till I really understood his goal. Snape didn’t believe in those fallacies, at least no more. And neither did I. Knowledge took us completely out of the dark, perhaps a little too late. Yet, Severus, secretly, turned his back to the Dark Lord and worked along with Dumbledore until the end of his life. I, unfortunately, couldn’t do much being bounded by the knot which kept me held to Lucius. 

It was the knowledge that broke through the darkness in us that brought to light the greatest illuminated feeling of all. The year was 1988. Me and Severus were drinking wine in the kitchen, talking about my new literary discovers – I was really interested in Russian Literature, one of his favourites – while we enjoyed the appetizers cooked by the elves. There wasn’t that intense exchange of looks neither that slow sexual tension growing between us. There was only the wine’s daze, and he kissed me suddenly.

When he pulled away, leaving me out of breath and blushed, he didn’t make a big deal of what just had happened. There was no justifies, or run away tries, neither the two of us played pretend. Severus just gave that ridiculous corner smile and continued the conversation as nothing had happened.

However, the following morning came and with it, the sobriety. The memory of the kiss tortured me for days and days. I felt guilty for have made the same mistake my husband did, the same mistake that sentenced our marriage to failure, even more when he had regretted and promised to never sin that way again – a promise that, how I’d said, I know he kept. But I felt even more guilty by the fact of not be sorry in any moment. I felt guilty, actually, for not have kissed Severus even more.

It was just like that I saw myself entering Hogwarts’s gates in a Saturday afternoon – I think it was a Saturday, I’m not sure – and following to Snape’s room. I told McGonagall that I was passing by to deliver something asked by Lucius, even knowing the danger which was the possibility my husband be questioned about this eventually. Something tells me that Minerva didn’t believe in me. I saw something strange in her eyes and the smile she gave me as she pointed Snape’s room sounded more mischievous than gentle.

I spent the whole afternoon and part of the night in Snape’s chambers. On his bed, shower, couch and even over his desk. Severus had a way of making me feel beautiful, powerful and indecent that completely took me off the axis. There was nothing more blasphemous than the way he used to worship me in our pleasure. There was nothing more holy than the meet between our hips, like the stream hitting the rocks. The same stream that hit me, holding me prisoner of the black eyes.

It was all so easy, even though complicated at the same time. Severus had conscience that I couldn’t just turn my back to my marriage in the same way I understood he needed to preserve his role as double spy. We never charged to each other this kind of things, but it was uncountable the among of times when we felt trap in our lie, when we had to create stories to cover our affair. Simple things became the hardest ones. To live a lie was a constant ordeal, and I always asked myself how Severus lived surrounded by so many untruths.

We drifted away in a gradual way, ironically in the same way it happened with me and Lucius. With Harry Potter’s admission to Hogwarts, the duties of Severus were many, and everything got worse with the return of the Dark Lord. I saw myself inside my biggest nightmare. After have broken through the ties that were given to me when I was a child, revive this all over again was a torture. And all got worse when Lucius was arrested after the Battle of Ministry.

I always knew how Voldemort was interested in younger minds. They were easier to be enticed, manipulated and, most of all, frightened. The most part of his current followers were sons of the first Death Eaters, the precursors who licked the boots of the one who at that time still looked like Tom Riddle. So I always had been aware that soon or later he would be interested for Draco to join them. However, I always thought that I could prepare myself better for this moment, that I could find a way to put my son away from all of that. It was not what happened.

Draco was forced to receive the Dark Mark under threats that all of us would be killed. The Dark Lord was determined to punish us for Lucius’s mistakes. The maternal lioness who lives inside me gave me strength to confront Lord Voldemort himself, and how couldn’t be different, I was received with _Cruciatus_ and others torture spells. Only left me one person I could count on, that one I knew I could turn to when the storm hit my window.

I was hoping that our reencounter could be full of desire and longing, even though the torments which were hitting me. I couldn’t take Bellatrix off my shoes and I hated her for have induced Severus to do the Unbreakable Vow. He would protect Draco even though I never had asked, yet he put his life to the test only to destabilize my sister’s arrogance, but also to show me that the feeling was still there, that he would die to protect my son.

I was loved by him one last time before the Battle of Hogwarts. He already was aware of what would happen, although had kept me in full ignorance because of fear. Fear that I would stop him from giving himself away, fear to see me drowned in suffering. I only figured out he was dead when I was taken by the Aurors for the first time. They seemed to feel some kind of happiness about that. Harry Potter hadn’t yet revealed the memories left by Snape at that time.

I am feeling sad like never before. I feel lost and hopeless. I still have a meagre strength, motivated by the eyes of my only boy, and for Draco I will fight till the end for my freedom. But I confess that would be too weird return to my life without Lucius and, mostly, without Severus.

I still can see the scar left on my hand by the Vow that kept us magically connected through the months before his death, but that definitely wasn’t the start of our connection. This mark reminds me that the Vow wasn’t the only unbreakable thing we did. The feeling that surrounded us will resist for ages and ages, just like a fossil. Our energies will hover over our remains, proving the existence of a magic unknown by wizards and muggles. I don’t talk about love. I talk about something beyond this, further than joy and pain our chaotic romance brought us. I talk about us.

We will be eternals, Severus. I know that.

With honesty,

Narcissa.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are important, you know? So... Let me know.


End file.
